Shored Fragmentshttps://shoredfragments.wordpress.com
'These fragments I have shored against my ruins' (TS Eliot, The Waste Land)Sat, 31 Jan 2015 22:00:17 +0000enhourly1http://wordpress.com/https://s2.wp.com/i/buttonw-com.pngShored Fragmentshttps://shoredfragments.wordpress.com
This blog really has moved…https://shoredfragments.wordpress.com/2014/05/12/this-blog-really-has-moved/
https://shoredfragments.wordpress.com/2014/05/12/this-blog-really-has-moved/#commentsMon, 12 May 2014 10:45:10 +0000http://shoredfragments.wordpress.com/?p=1304]]>I still see people signing up to follow from time to time. Please try http://steverholmes.org.uk/blog instead…]]>https://shoredfragments.wordpress.com/2014/05/12/this-blog-really-has-moved/feed/0Steve HThis blog has movedhttps://shoredfragments.wordpress.com/2012/09/29/this-blog-has-moved/
https://shoredfragments.wordpress.com/2012/09/29/this-blog-has-moved/#commentsSat, 29 Sep 2012 20:05:08 +0000http://shoredfragments.wordpress.com/?p=1173]]>I’m moving Shored Fragments to a new server, without adverts. Please point your bookmarks and feeds to http://steverholmes.org.uk/blog/
Thanks!]]>https://shoredfragments.wordpress.com/2012/09/29/this-blog-has-moved/feed/0Steve HOf a troublesome comma in the Creedhttps://shoredfragments.wordpress.com/2012/09/28/of-a-troublesome-comma-in-the-creed/
https://shoredfragments.wordpress.com/2012/09/28/of-a-troublesome-comma-in-the-creed/#commentsFri, 28 Sep 2012 10:43:31 +0000http://shoredfragments.wordpress.com/?p=1294]]>The morning office I presently use to structure the first part of my prayers invites me to recite the Apostles’ Creed each day. Famously, the Christological clauses of that Creed begin:

I believe in Jesus Christ, his only son, our Lord.

He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary,

he suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried…

The comma at the end of the second line has become rather notorious; it is apparently sufficient to summarise the entire earthy ministry of Jesus, and that is regularly held up as an indication of the weakness of the Creed as a summary of the Christian faith (focused as it is on Jesus); sometimes it is held up as an indication that the traditional formulations of Christian faith, which centred on the Creed, are lacking in a crucial area.

I first heard this sort of argument, and began to be suspicious of this troublesome comma, something like twenty years ago from anabaptist friends. These days I hear it more from people interested in what gets called ‘Kingdom theology': the true Biblical gospel is the claim that Jesus is God’s final culmination of the story of Israel. The creed offers us nothing of Israel, and nothing of the life of Jesus; it is seriously deficient as an expression of the gospel. An an innocent comma is the symbol of that.

Twenty years ago I was not in the custom of using an office to structure my prayers, and when I started I used Celtic Daily Prayer, the office of the Northumbria Community, or Celebrating Common Prayer from the Society of St Francis. Neither of these includes a daily recitation of the Creed. It was when, a couple of years back, I switched to wanting an office on my phone (I use ‘The Daily Office’ from Mission St Clare; the iPhone app is free, here) that I began to trip over that comma each day. I began to wonder about the criticisms more seriously, and whether I really wanted to recite these words as part of my daily devotion… (I’m a Baptist. Creeds are optional!)

I have come to the conclusion that the Office itself is the justification for the shape of the Creed. Morning Prayer begins with confession and some psalmody, and then proceeds as follows:

Old Testament Lesson

Canticle (generally from Old Testament) followed by the Gloria Patri

New Testament Lesson

Canticle (sometimes from New Testament; sometimes from church history)

The Creed here is located in the context of participation in Israel’s worship (psalmody and the OT canticle); a hearing of an excerpt from Israel’s story (the OT lesson); and a hearing of events from the life of Jesus (the Gospel reading) – and also of a hearing of the Church’s story and participation in the Church’s worship (NT lesson & canticle); it offers a framing narrative for these stories and for this worship. Its recitation can be understood to be the liturgical claim/explanation ‘You have joined in the worship of Israel and the Church, and heard of their stories; now be reminded that the God to whom Israel and the Church offer worship is properly named as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and that the stories you have heard are brief chapters in a larger story that runs from creation to “the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting”; You have heard a brief tale of the winsome wonder of Jesus; know that this tale is part of a larger story that runs from birth of a Virgin by the Spirit’s power, through cross, grave, resurrection, and ascension, to a return to judge the living and the dead.’

Of course, if the Creed is abstracted from its proper liturgical context, then it does not serve this framing function, and the criticisms that are made are fair – but it should not be. (Particularly not the Apostles’ Creed, which is not the polemical product of a Council, but – as far as we can tell – a concretisation of the creed used in the liturgy of the Roman church from at least as early as the second century.)

So, I continue recite the Creed, in its proper liturgical context, morning by morning with some cheerfulness, and without stumbling over a troublesome comma.

Tagged: Bible, Symbolics, Theology, Worship]]>https://shoredfragments.wordpress.com/2012/09/28/of-a-troublesome-comma-in-the-creed/feed/4Steve HAnother myth about gender and church leadershiphttps://shoredfragments.wordpress.com/2012/09/21/another-myth-about-gender-and-church-leadership/
https://shoredfragments.wordpress.com/2012/09/21/another-myth-about-gender-and-church-leadership/#commentsFri, 21 Sep 2012 19:59:03 +0000http://shoredfragments.wordpress.com/?p=1281]]>A couple of weeks ago I blogged about the regularly-heard assertion that embracing the ministry of women led to a slide into liberalism, and pointed out that there was simply no evidence to back this up. Today someone told me that a certain well-known pastor from Seattle had spoken at a church leaders conference in the UK and insisted that one proof of the rightness of denying preaching and leadership roles to women was that denominations that did were growing and denominations that did not were shrinking. It struck me on hearing this that I had heard the same argument four or five times in the past few weeks – sometimes as a broad assertion, as my phrasing above; sometimes phrased more anecdotally (‘I have encountered very few churches pastored by women that are growing…’), but with the anecdote used to establish a general principle which was then the basis of an argument.

In an idle moment this evening, I wondered what the evidence base for such assertions looked like.

First, comparing denominations is of little use; they differ on too many variables. Good evidence will come from comparing local congregations which are as similar as possible in all things save the gender of the core leader. Data like this is in fact easily available, for Church of England parishes, and it suggests that the gender of the incumbent (=senior/sole minister in CoE terms) does in fact influence the prospects for church growth slightly but measurably: Churches with female senior/sole pastors grow more often and faster than churches with a man in the role.

This data can be found in tabular form in Bob Jackson’s The Road to Growth (Church House Publishing, 2005), p. 44. Jackson was a mission enabler for the Church of England, and did some survey work on various dioceses (and the New Wine network) between 1999 and 2004. 75 of the parishes he considered had a female incumbent for some or all of the time surveyed, and on average they recorded growth of 9%, against 2% for parishes with solely male incumbents. Now, this data is far from perfect: n=75 is not bad, but not very good either; given the dates and the Anglican context one has to consider whether openness to a female incumbent is acting as a proxy for some other variable (Anglo-catholic parishes shrinking badly, e.g.); it would be much more convincing to have data across a range of denominations – and indeed countries; …

All that said, this is hard data, as compared to the windy rhetoric or the personal reminiscence of my opening paragraph. As such, it deserves respect at least until other, better, data is available. The evidence, such as we have it, is that churches grow faster with female senior pastors.

How does this play into debates over gender and ministry? I am pulled two ways on this: as an evangelical, there is a strongly pragmatic streak to my beliefs about the church: ‘if people get saved, if churches grow, then we should do it – I’ll make the theology work later…'; as a Baptist, I have a conflicting hesitancy about ‘numbers’ arguments: ‘we are called to fidelity, not to success; you can grow easily by compromising with the spirit of the age…’ So, even if the data were compelling in one direction or the other, I would still hesitate to argue from data to ecclesiological principle.

That said, I opened this post with the comment that I have heard the assertion that churches led by women do not grow four or five times in recent weeks; each time, it has been offered as a reason to reject the ministry of women. But the assertion is, on the evidence available, simply false – just as the assertion about ‘egalitarianism’ being a slippery slope to liberalism is simply false on the basis of available evidence.

The temptation to get polemical here is strong; I will resist, and simply note in general terms that if someone continues to pile up demonstrably false arguments in support of a position, there inevitably comes a point when the reasonable response is to suppose that there are in fact no good arguments to offer, and that the position is based simply on prejudice. Those who believe there is good reason to support the position in question, therefore, should be as hawkish in calling out poor arguments as their opponents are.

Tagged: Ecclesiology, Gender, pastoral ministry]]>https://shoredfragments.wordpress.com/2012/09/21/another-myth-about-gender-and-church-leadership/feed/11Steve HGay relationships in the Bible?https://shoredfragments.wordpress.com/2012/09/19/gay-relationships-in-the-bible/
https://shoredfragments.wordpress.com/2012/09/19/gay-relationships-in-the-bible/#commentsWed, 19 Sep 2012 10:20:07 +0000http://shoredfragments.wordpress.com/?p=1277]]>I have been reading the new edition of Jeffrey John’s book, now titled Permanent, Faithful, Stable, Christian Same-sex Marriage,in preparation for writing a couple of pieces on human sexuality. In the course of his discussion, Canon John makes brief reference to the miracle of the healing of the Centurion’s servant in Lk. 7:1-10 // Mt. 8:5-13, and draws on Theissen and others to suggest that ‘[a]ny Jew … would almost certainly have assumed they were gay lovers.’ (p. 14) On this basis, and because ‘the possibility that the relationship was homosexual would not have escaped Jesus, Matthew or Luke’ (15), Canon John argues that ‘it is a real question whether we are intended to see Jesus deliberately including a gay couple here as yet another category of the despised and rejected…’ (15)

I had heard this line before, of course, although the argument that it fitted a pattern in the healing miracles of extending grace to the excluded was new to me. It occurred to me, though, that it was not a text commonly considered in the literature on theological accounts of human sexuality, and a quick search confirmed that: Stan Grenz noted that the argument had been made in Welcoming but not Affirming; beyond that, as far as I could determine, silence. The text is not even treated in Robert Gagnon’s compendious The Bible and Homosexual Practice (except for a note about God-fearers amongst the Gentiles, with the intervention of the elders in Luke’s version being held up as evidence.)

This story seems to play extensively – along with the relationship of David and Jonathan (which gets a bit more discussion – see both Grenz and Gagnon, or Eugene Rogers, Sexuality & the Christian Body, e.g.) – in ‘semi-popular’ defences of the acceptance of faithful same-sex marriage in the church, at least in my hearing; given that, the silence of serious sources – from any side of the debate – is unfortunate.

It does seem clear, however, that neither account will stand up as a Biblical defence of faithful same-sex marriage. This is not because of the silence as to the precise relationship – Grenz’s point about the centurion, and Gagnon’s point about David and Jonathan – but because, even if we were to accept that the relationships were actively sexual, neither gets us anywhere near a picture of ‘faithful same-sex marriage’. Holding up David as an exemplar of any account of sexual ethics seems to me to be rather ambitious, given the details of his career; it is surely really very obvious that he was not someone who experienced exclusively same-sex erotic attraction and who was seeking a faithful and exclusive sexual relationship with another man…

As for the centurion, it is very plausible that a Roman centurion would engage in sexual intercourse with his slaves, both male and female; it was a standard way for a slave owner to assert control over his possessions. (There is an extensive literature on this.) Raping a slave to assert ownership and control is some distance from any ideals of Christian marriage I know of, however. Even if we hypothesise some sort of unusually affectionate relationship (Luke has the slave as ‘precious’ – entimos – to his master), we have to insist that a properly loving relationship can never occur in the context of ownership – we open the door to all sorts of horrific ethical possibilities otherwise.

This is not the end of the argument of course – hardly even the beginning (Oliver O’Donovan entitled his book on the debates within the Anglican Communion A Conversation Waiting to Begin…). An intelligent discussion proceeds by testing and weeding out bad arguments, however, and these arguments are just bad.

Tagged: Bible, marriage, New Testament]]>https://shoredfragments.wordpress.com/2012/09/19/gay-relationships-in-the-bible/feed/8Steve HThe Los Angeles Theology Conferencehttps://shoredfragments.wordpress.com/2012/09/16/the-los-angeles-theology-conference/
https://shoredfragments.wordpress.com/2012/09/16/the-los-angeles-theology-conference/#commentsSun, 16 Sep 2012 19:53:00 +0000http://shoredfragments.wordpress.com/?p=1273]]>If you’ve not already heard, Oliver Crisp and Fred Sanders have organised the first in what promises to be a series of conferences on Christian theology, to be held in LA, CA, 17-18th January, 2013, on the theme of ‘Christology: Ancient and Modern’. The models are avowedly the Wheaton theology conference and the Edinburgh Dogmatics Conference – I am on the organising committee of the EDC – which suggests an intention to engage seriously with classical Christian dogmatics. The choice of plenary speakers only reinforces this impression: George Hunsinger, Katherine Sonderegger, Alan Torrance, Peter Leithart, and Oliver Crisp. This promises to be a significant addition to the presently available contexts for really serious theological discussion.

Tagged: Conferences, Theology]]>https://shoredfragments.wordpress.com/2012/09/16/the-los-angeles-theology-conference/feed/0Steve H‘Saying Goodbye': remembrance services for people who have lost babies in pregnancyhttps://shoredfragments.wordpress.com/2012/09/06/saying-goodbye-remembrance-services-for-people-who-have-lost-babies-in-pregnancy/
https://shoredfragments.wordpress.com/2012/09/06/saying-goodbye-remembrance-services-for-people-who-have-lost-babies-in-pregnancy/#commentsThu, 06 Sep 2012 18:43:52 +0000http://shoredfragments.wordpress.com/?p=1268]]>I’ve been aware for a little while of a new organisation called ‘Saying Goodbye’, which has been set up to run a series of remembrance services around the UK for people who have lost children during pregnancy. This is an excellent idea, long needed, and everything I can see makes me believe it will be very well implemented.

Culturally, we tend not to acknowledge early miscarriage in any way, but, even if we have not experienced it ourselves, anyone who has been a pastor knows that the pain and grief is real and serious – and can be made worse by the isolation, the inability to talk to anyone about it. Offering families a chance to grieve, and to acknowledge their loss in a supportive context where others understand, is a great service.

Saying Goodbye have organised seven services this autumn, in Exeter (15/9), Edinburgh (22/9), York (29/9), Birmingham (28/10), Cardiff (3/11), London (24/11), and Bristol (8/12). Further dates and locations are planned into 2013.

Zoe and Andy Clarke-Coates, who are behind Saying Goodbye, are experienced and professional events managers. I’ve seen some of their work first hand, and I am sure that, in cooperation with the cathedrals who are hosting the services, they will do this with sensitivity and meaning. They are being supported by the Miscarriage Association, Bliss, and the Association of Early Pregnancy Units, amongst others.

Saying Goodbye have a website describing their services and intentions here. You can find them on Twitter at @SayingGoodbyeUK and on Facebook. It’s a cause worth supporting, and publicising – there are so many who might benefit from what is being offered.

Tagged: pastoral ministry]]>https://shoredfragments.wordpress.com/2012/09/06/saying-goodbye-remembrance-services-for-people-who-have-lost-babies-in-pregnancy/feed/0Steve H‘Egalitarianism’ as a slippery slope?https://shoredfragments.wordpress.com/2012/08/31/egalitarianism-as-a-slippery-slope/
https://shoredfragments.wordpress.com/2012/08/31/egalitarianism-as-a-slippery-slope/#commentsFri, 31 Aug 2012 13:33:04 +0000http://shoredfragments.wordpress.com/?p=1253]]>I have heard or read a number of people recently arguing that an ‘egalitarian’ (hate the term…) position is to be rejected by evangelicals because it necessarily involves an approach to the the Bible which tends towards the erosion of Scriptural authority. This argument comes in two forms, one which has a degree of prima facie plausibility but is weak, and one which would be powerful but is in fact simply implausible. The plausible/weak form is based on hypotheticals: ‘someone who treats 1Tim 2 or Eph 5 like egalitarians do must therefore …’ The problem with this is the hidden premise in the argument is the theological (exegetical/hermeneutical) imagination of the one making the argument: in fact what is being said is ‘I cannot imagine a way of responsibly understanding Scripture that allows these conclusions…’ The limits of my, or anyone else’s, imagination are not particularly interesting theological data; historical reality (how have people who take this view in fact dealt with Scripture?) is far more interesting, which brings us to the second form of the argument.

This involves an assertion that it is a matter of historical fact that someone who accepts an ‘egalitarian’ position will probably – not necessarily, but probably – soon cease to be evangelical because they have lost any adequate account of the authority of Scripture. An acceptance of the ministry of women is a/the first step on a slippery slope to liberalism, and that can be shown by historical example. This would be a strong argument if it were plausible. Any serious student of evangelical history can point to positions that do seem generally to correlate with a later loss of evangelical faith – the most obvious would be the refusal (on solid grounds of Biblical authority, usually) to use traditional but non-Scriptural language in talking about the Trinity. If it could be shown historically that there is in fact a correlation between the acceptance of the ministry of women and a later denial of Biblical authority then that would be a telling point.

There is only one problem: there is no historical support whatsoever for this position; in fact, I would argue that there is a significant body of historical data pointing in precisely the opposite direction. Since the Reformation, there has been a broad correlation between a high view of Scriptural authority and an acceptance of the ministry of women.

Those who advance the ‘egalitarianism as slippery slope’ position often rely on assertions drawn from personal experience: ‘I have seen this over and over again'; ‘in three decades of ministry it has become clear to me'; ‘I, sadly, can think of many former friends who…’. There is a place for personal reminiscence in forming historical argument, but it is a carefully delimited one. Responsible scholarship knows the extent to which our narration of our own experiences tends to be conformed to what we think we should have observed. I am sure Christian pastors and scholars who say things like the above are honestly reflecting what they think they have experienced, but I am equally sure that, were we able to test their narratives against the facts of their life, we would find the intrusion of a considerable amount of unconscious bias. What is needed is proper historical scholarship: in the case of the Trinitarian language issue above, there is a classic case (drawn from older Dissenting history rather than evangelicalism): the Salters’ Hall synod of 1619. We have lists of those who subscribed to a traditional confession of faith, and of those who refused on grounds of fidelity to Scripture; we can trace their future careers, or the later denominational alignment of their churches; the correlation is easy to demonstrate on the basis not of imperfect recollection, but documented historical evidence.

Where is the equivalent detailed historical work that shows that those who embrace the ministry of women tend to fall from a conviction of the authority of Scripture? It is just not there. I submit that there is a good reason it is not there: there is no available historical evidence to support assertions that ‘egalitarians’ tend to cease being evangelical. Such assertions are, when tested against historical evidence, simply fantasies.

More than this: as any student of evangelical history knows, until the second half of the twentieth century, evangelicalism was more consistently hospitable to the teaching and leading ministry of women than any other Christian tradition except the Quakers.(And the change in the C20th was generally other traditions becoming more hospitable, not evangelicals becoming less so.) Major evangelical leaders have often accepted the ministry of women: Wesley and Booth stand out, but there are many, many others. And major evangelical traditions have rejoiced in, and benefited from, the ministry of women, from Primitive Methodism through the Salvation Army and the holiness movements into Pentecostalism. Evangelicals in historic denominations that were slow to embrace the ministry of women have repeatedly shown themselves in practice to be more open to women’s ministry than their denominations ever really allowed them to be. (There is a delightful vignette in Tim Larsen’s Biographical Dictionary of Evangelicals concerning Hannah Whitall Smith’s preaching at the famous 1875 Brighton Convention: ‘[t]he most popular sessions … were those in which Hannah preached … to audiences of 5,000 or more, mostly clergymen [of the Church of England] who were theologically opposed to the preaching ministry of women.’ This is hardly an unusual narrative in evangelical history.)

(And all this without even considering the contribution of women’s preaching and leadership to the evangelical missionary movement, which is defining for evangelical identity through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries …)

I think I know the history of evangelicalism moderately well, but I am very happy to acknowledge that there are others who know the field far better. Indeed, we are blessed to live in an age of several truly great historians of evangelicalism. So I ask very simply: where, in any of the works of any of these historians – David Bebbington; Mark Noll; George Marsden; Timothy Larsen; … – where is there a single suggestion that there is a correlation in evangelical history between an acceptance of the ministry of women and a loss of evangelical conviction? Can those who trumpet this ‘slippery slope’ argument so loudly point to one single reference from a credible historian? I am confident that the answer is no.

If we expand our gaze from evangelicalism to Protestantism more generally, there is in fact an observable broad correlation between views of Biblical authority and views of the ministry of women: those who accept the ministry of women tend, prior to the second half of the twentieth century, to be those with the highest accounts of Biblical authority. Of course, prior to the rise of higher criticism, an account of the authority of Scripture was common to all strands of the church, and so this is not about ‘Bible believing’ vs ‘liberal'; rather it is about how the authority of Scripture is lined up against respect for the (subordinate) authority of tradition. It is, repeatedly, those who are most insistent in repudiating the tradition who are most ready to accept the ministry of women. To throw out only the very obvious examples: Baptists and Quakers in the seventeenth century; evangelicals in the eighteenth; Primitive Methodists in the nineteenth; Pentecostals in the twentieth; … Prior to the 1950s almost every denomination which embraced the ministry of women did so on the basis that they believed the authority of Scripture trumped cultural norms.

Of course, the correlation is only approximate – the Brethren would be an obvious counter-example, in that they fit into this pattern of radical counter-cultural Biblicism but refuse the teaching ministry to women. Further, obviously correlation is not cause, and the observed correlation stands in need of historical explanation, but the first point is simply to note that it is there – and its being there already suggests very strongly that the ‘egalitarianism is a slippery slope to liberalism’ argument is without foundation.

(What is the explanation? My version would go something like this: there are various theological positions that seem easy to find in the Biblical text but that have been difficult to hold because (Western) host-cultures have found them dangerous. These include (inter alia) separation of church and state; a thoroughgoing commitment to religious liberty; pacifism, or something rather close to it; believers’ baptism; communal possession of goods; the refusal to swear oaths; and the full ministry of women. Groups that deny the authority of tradition and see their commitment to Biblical authority as being essentially counter-cultural will find it easier to embrace some or all of these positions.)

Tagged: Evangelicalism, Gender]]>https://shoredfragments.wordpress.com/2012/08/31/egalitarianism-as-a-slippery-slope/feed/27Steve HThe bare minimum gospel?https://shoredfragments.wordpress.com/2012/08/26/the-bare-minimum-gospel/
https://shoredfragments.wordpress.com/2012/08/26/the-bare-minimum-gospel/#commentsSun, 26 Aug 2012 20:51:19 +0000http://shoredfragments.wordpress.com/?p=1189]]>I’ve been involved in a discussion recently, connected to the excellent Evangelical Alliance Confidence in the Gospel campaign, which raised, amongst other issues, the question ‘what is essential to a gospel presentation?’ I understood the reason the question was on the table – are their certain things that, if they are not included, make an account of the Christian gospel simply inadequate – a ‘bare minimum gospel’? – and I sympathise with the concern: of course there are ways of calling people to faith that are so misleading, or just so anaemic, that they need to be criticised. That said, this way of presenting the question was one I struggled with.

The good news of what God has done in Jesus Christ His Son, the gospel, changes absolutely everything, or so I believe. There is no human possibility left untransformed, no human story that does not now have different possible endings. Sometimes we will not be able to see immediately how the gospel is transformative of this or that reality; sometimes we will honestly disagree about the nature of transformation brought by the gospel, but I cannot begin to conceive of an adequately Christian presentation of the gospel that does not hold out such far-reaching consequences, at least potentially.

Now of course, some of these consequences will be more central than others. We might disagree on how the gospel transforms our diet (Rom. 14:13-21) without that being a major problem; disagreeing, however, on how the gospel transforms our attitude to the ancient covenant practice of circumcision is, or at least once was, extremely serious (Gal. 5:2-6). There are some truths of the gospel that are more central, some truths indeed that are absolutely central: the triunity of God; the true humanity and true deity – and the true Lordship – of our Lord Jesus Christ; the sinfulness of humanity; salvation available only by God’s grace, through Christ’s sacrifice; the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit; the privilege and responsibility of adoption into God’s family; …

In a proper process of Christian initiation, one would want to insist that each of these points is covered, and also that other points, perhaps less central to the gospel, but important for Christian initiation, are dealt with – I am here thinking of local practices of discipleship and being church: homegroups are not central to the gospel, for example, but if they are the primary mode of caring for and discipling believers in the particular church fellowship that a new convert is joining, they become a matter of importance; equally, for someone joining a Baptist (or other congregationalist) fellowship, explaining the practice of church meeting is very important, but hardly central to the gospel.

This, however, is an account of what must be covered in a process of Christian initiation; a gospel presentation is not, of itself, a process of Christian initiation, or at least not necessarily. A gospel presentation can be an invitation to a journey to find out more; as such its content needs to be true and worthwhile, but can be really very partial, and certainly does not have any required content.

I can see three possible rejoinders to this. The first I will call the ‘elevator pitch‘ question: ‘But if you only had 30 seconds to explain the gospel to someone, what would you say? – that’s the essential truth of the gospel, the “bare minimum”!’ The second we can call the ‘moment of conversion’ question: ‘Yes, you might interest people in all sorts of ways, and there is much truth you want them to believe – but what makes the difference between death and rebirth? What is the one thing that must be believed for someone to be truly converted – that’s the essential truth of the gospel, the “bare minimum”!’ The third might be described as the ‘power of the Spirit’ issue: ‘The Holy Spirit empowers true gospel preaching; what is the thing that must be said to be confident that the Holy Spirit will be at work? that’s the essential truth of the gospel, the “bare minimum”!’

It seems to me the ‘elevator pitch’ is a non-question, except in a very particular circumstance (described later). If you only have a minute or two to speak to someone about following Jesus you should do exactly what you would do if you had an hour or a day: find how the promises of Jesus relate to the most pressing felt need in her life, and press that so that she will want to find out more. There is no ‘bare minimum gospel’ on this telling, just a responsibility to be wise (and to seek the Spirit’s guidance) in applying the claims and promises of Christ to every particular human situation one encounters.

I’m not sure that the ‘moment of conversion’ question is any more real, in that neither I, nor any other Christian, ever has a need to answer it. Thankfully, God decides who gets to sit down at His Son’s wedding feast, not me; my job is to publish the invitation – and the dress code (Mt. 22:11) – as widely as possible; before I baptise someone, I want to be convinced of the reality of the Spirit’s gracious salvific work in their life, but I am not called to say ‘it happened at 8.04pm last Tuesday’. For many of us – I include myself, converted under the preaching of John Chapman at a Cambridge Intercollegiate Christian Union mission meeting – there will be, if not a moment, at least a fairly well defined short period of time we can point to and say ‘it was then that God brought new life into my cold dead soul!'; but that will not be the case for all, and the pastor’s task is to recognise that new life has begun, not to define its precise moment of beginning.

The ‘power of the Spirit’ argument is equally spurious, I think. I rely utterly on the power of the Spirit whenever I preach – surely we all do? – and, whilst I think there are, under God’s sovereignty, genuine aids and blocks to knowing that (my prayerfulness and humility; a seriousness in confessing sin in my own life; a humble submission of my ideas to the message of the text; the prayers of my people; …), I do not regard the mention, perhaps in passing, of one idea (whatever it might be) that might not be at all relevant to the text as one such aid.

(The extreme case of the ‘elevator pitch’? The elevator, say in the Shard, where the elevator is a ‘lift’, has failed. We are plummeting towards the base of the shaft at terminal velocity, which will be, well, terminal. What does the responsible evangelist say to his/her fellows? Assuming the unlikely case that I, or anyone else, had the calmness to say something other than ‘*@$%!’ (or possibly ‘Mummy!’) repeatedly; what is the 30-second gospel presentation that one presents to those on the verge of certain death? Something similar happened just once in Scripture; the prayer that was then adequate to salvation was ‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your Kingdom'; so the best answer would seem to be to encourage them in such a prayer…)

So, I do not believe that there is any ‘bare minimum’ gospel. The riches of the gospel are just too wonderful to be reduced like this, and the possibilities of transformation the gospel holds out are too varied. Of course I want to insist on the centrality of forgiveness of sin available only through the gracious gift of God in the atoning death of the Lord Jesus; but we can’t reduce the gospel to that single message without making it too thin, too narrow, unworthy of the riches of God’s grace.

Tagged: Atonement, Christology, Evangelism, Gospel, Theology]]>https://shoredfragments.wordpress.com/2012/08/26/the-bare-minimum-gospel/feed/2Steve HWhy ‘complementarianism’ matters: reflections occasioned by Carl Truemanhttps://shoredfragments.wordpress.com/2012/08/25/why-complementarianism-matters-reflections-occasioned-by-carl-trueman/
https://shoredfragments.wordpress.com/2012/08/25/why-complementarianism-matters-reflections-occasioned-by-carl-trueman/#commentsSat, 25 Aug 2012 09:51:09 +0000http://shoredfragments.wordpress.com/?p=1245]]>Carl Trueman has an excellent blog post on the Reformation21 site, expressing puzzlement at why so many (American, evangelical) parachurch organisations make complementarianism (male-only leadership) a defining point of their platform. He highlights the potential absurdity of this in characteristically sharp and witty fashion, pointing out that the historical divisions that these organisations choose to bridge (baptismal practice; church polity; doctrines of grace) are, or should be, far more basic than complementarianism, and asking some sharp questions about practice (he imagines a situation of a male, paedobaptist, Presbyterian minister and a female Baptist minister visiting a Baptist church that is part of one of these coalitions, and asks how this will be played out, indicating that every possible answer is absurd.)

As a committed evangelical (indeed, someone who has defended inerrancy in print a couple of times), who is also committed to the principle that not only should all areas of church life be open to women, but that every local church should in fact have female leaders, I might be expected to applaud Carl’s post. He certainly makes his point well, but I think he misses something about the significance of praxis in defining unity. Reflection on that point illuminates something about British evangelicalism also.

Carl’s post asks about theology, and considers practice in the local church; what he misses, I think, is any consideration of what organisations like the Gospel Coalition actually do. I have commented before that church division generally happens on issues of practice rather than doctrine: two people can probably find a way of negotiating a disagreement over (say) Christology, particularly if they both agree not to preach on it; if they disagree over how to celebrate the Lord’s Supper, they are fairly soon going to be worshipping in different congregations, simply because they cannot both practice their beliefs in the same one. The original genius of the first evangelical parachurch groups back in the eighteenth century was their ability to negotiate differences over church order and sacramental practice by removing their organisational activity from the context of the local church: a Bible Society meeting in a town hall can be attended by Baptists, Presbyterians, and Episcopalians indifferently.

At this functional level, what a group like The Gospel Coalition does is hold conferences and write stuff; the fracture points for such a group, then, are going to centre on disagreements over how to organise a conference and/or what stuff gets written and by who. The question of who is allowed to speak in public, then, inevitably becomes a point of division, and so of identity. If the group is going to organise conferences, and is only going to invite men to preach/teach at them, then the restriction of the teaching ministry to men is a defining point of the group, and it is as well to be honest about that.

Why has this not generally happened this side of the Atlantic? We might point to the generally more relaxed attitudes of British churches (Carl’s illustration of a Presbyterian pastor being refused admission to the Lord’s Table because he has not been baptised as a believer does not describe something that would happen in very many British Baptist churches, rightly or wrongly). We might also point to some more nuanced accounts of complementarianism that operate in Britain, largely due to the weight of influence of the Church of England. I suspect, however, that the most honest response would be to say that the same point of division has happened in British evangelicalism, but we have generally been less than open about it.

To take the issue of nuance, a common form of British complementarianism has focused on the issue of authority, rather than the issue of teaching per se. So there are many British evangelical churches which have articulated a position where women are allowed to teach, indeed to be part of the ordained ministry team, but are not allowed to hold the senior role in the team. Churches holding such a position could cheerfully be a part of a conference with both male and female speakers, although they may want some visible asymmetry to reflect their theology. (In some cases this gets convoluted to the extreme, with certain central platforms being denied to women; I have never been able to fathom what theological principle is at play in allowing women to speak to only a certain size of audience…)

That said, some British evangelical parachurch groups do in practice restrict their platforms to men only; I have been told by people on UCCF staff that this is, or recently has been, common amongst university Christian Unions, for example. The rhetoric deployed becomes ‘we have no policy on the issue, but we invite speakers who are acceptable to everyone in the organisation, and some people object to having female speakers.’ This seems to me to be at least disingenuous, and bordering on being dishonest. It ignores the possibility that there may be people present who regard it as important that there is a gender mix in any slate of speakers; it also leads to the organisation operating according to a belief system that it denies having. Despite the rhetoric, the organisation does have a policy on the issue, a policy that is visibly determining its activities; given that it is surely better to be honest and open about the policy, than to deny its existence?

So, unlike Carl, I applaud the Gospel Coalition and similar groups for their honesty, whilst (unlike Carl) disagreeing with their theology on this issue. Any group that is organising multiple conferences, or inviting multiple speakers, is going to have a series of live positions on who they will invite: these positions ought to be stated openly by the group, not denied in rhetoric whilst being enacted in practice.